Public Health Nurses. From the Visiting Nurses Association Collection.

Overview

Established in 1966 with help from a United States Public Health Service grant, the History of Nursing Archives contains the personal and professional papers of nursing leaders; records of the schools of nursing; public health and professional nursing organizations; histories of various American and foreign schools of nursing, including early textbooks; as well as a very extensive book collection. These manuscripts and books document the evolution of the profession and its contribution to the fields of public health, women's rights, and military history.

Contained within the Archives are over 300 letters dating from 1851 to 1900 from Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. Within the book collection are first editions of her writings, including A Contribution to the Sanitary History of the British Army During the Late War with Russia, which was published anonymously in 1859. Also included is a sixpence edition of Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes signed by Nightingale with a letter dated September 29, 1869.

Nursing leaders whose papers join Nightingale's include Florence Blanchfield, Superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps during World War II; Lucile Petry Leone, Director of the United States Cadet Nursing Corps during World War II and the first nurse Assistant Surgeon General of the United States; Jessie M. Scott, Director of the Division of Nurses of the United States Public Health Service; Margaret G. Arnstein, professor of public health nursing and Dean of Yale University School of Nursing; and Dr. Joyce Clifford, inventor and architect of nursing's Professional Practice Model. These are merely a few collections in the History of Nursing Archives.